


The Stakes Are High (But This, Love, Is Ours)

by Streetlamp_Sunset



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e10 Sebastien Raine, M/M, Personal Growth, Pre-Relationship, Rose Apothecary (Schitt's Creek), Sebastien Raine is an Asshole, Supportive Patrick Brewer, what do we think body milk is if not milk for your body?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26153971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Streetlamp_Sunset/pseuds/Streetlamp_Sunset
Summary: Patrick settled on the other end of the couch, “David-”“I slept with Sebastien,” David said, snapping his head up to meet Patrick’s eyes, “I slept with him to get the memory card.” Patrick should know. If he was still even considering staying, Patrick should know who he really was.“Are you okay?”David tries to self sabotage by picking a fight; Patrick doesn't let him.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 10
Kudos: 117





	The Stakes Are High (But This, Love, Is Ours)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ours by Taylor Swift

“David?” Patrick stepped tentatively around the curtain separating the room behind the cash from the rest of the store. He looked about as bad as David felt, but there was an ever present determination in the set of his shoulders.

David straightened up, wiping at his eyes, “hum?” He was curled up at the end of the couch they'd tucked in the corner of the back room. Patrick had found it at a significant discount in Elm Valley; it was deceptively comfortable for the atrocious shade of it’s upholstery.

“Are you okay?”

David looked away, tracing the tip of a pale green floral in the brocade. He felt unmoored. He’d come to terms with what he had to do to get the memory card from Sebastien; he’d done worse for less. It was everything around the act that he found unnerving. 

“Mmm, fine,” David bit out. He pressed his mouth together in a thin line, twisting a ring around his fingers with quick, agitated motions. The gentle concern in Patrick’s voice sat, cold and heavy, in the pit of his stomach.

Sebastien had called him _healthy,_ which wasn't altogether untrue. Sebastien had known David when he could afford to get fucked up on far worse than whatever Stevie found in the other guests’ rooms. Now, there was no sharp pallor to undercut the line of his cheekbones. His leather jacket, a trusty Rick Owens piece, had drawn Sebastien in the way it was meant to, but it didn’t fit like it always had. That was an unsettling realization. Mostly, because David wasn’t upset by the changes the way he would’ve been in New York.

Walking into Rose Apothecary - a store he was building in middle-of-nowhere Schitt's Creek - the morning after, had felt surreal. David was met with Patrick’s bright smile and a hot cup coffee exactly how he liked it. It was viscerally uncomfortable, the dregs of his old life muddying the waters of this one. 

David picked a fight with the sugary sweet caramel on his tongue. He’d only ever drank it black in New York. This was harder to swallow. He hadn’t been able to look at Patrick’s stricken face. Instead, he mumbled something about labeling the body milk and retreated. David had called Rose Apothecary _his store_ ; he’d been trying to give Patrick an out. It sounded more like a lie the harder he tried to convince himself it was true. One night was all it took to drag him back into the undertow; the ugly pieces of his past disturbing the idyllic surface.

Patrick settled on the other end of the couch, “David-”

“I slept with Sebastien,” David said, snapping his head up to meet Patrick’s eyes, “I slept with him to get the memory card.” Patrick should know. If he was still even considering staying, Patrick should know who he really was.

“Are you okay?” Patrick repeated. There was no judgement in his tone, painfully genuine concern in his eyes. His hands twitched like they wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how. They wound up balled in his lap. 

“Um, yeah, I’m, it was oddly cathartic,” David said, because that was the worst part. It hadn’t felt wrong. It was so easy to fall back into that old version of himself. That David chased his own pleasure without giving a fuck who he hurt or, more often, who hurt him in the process. It was that David who had lashed out at Patrick, because his unfaltering, unconditional kindness couldn’t be real. “And he doesn’t have the pictures anymore.”

“Good,” Patrick bumped their shoulders together, “I’m glad, David.” He said it with the same steady, sure tone he had used earlier, “It’s _our_ store, David.”

David didn’t know how to respond to that. Lucky, Patrick habitually diffused moments of sincerity with humor. “In any case, you seem to have gotten a lot done back here,” he gestured to all three bottles of body milk David had managed to label before giving up completely. “Are you sure we should go with ‘body milk’? That seems somewhat misleading,” he turned it over in his hands, “Unless, can you drink these?” 

David rolled his eyes, “anyone with a fiber of common sense would know that it’s not actually milk.” 

Patrick’s bark of laughter flooded him with relief. David basked in the sound. Lighthouse, port in a storm, he followed it back to the person he wanted to be. David put Sebastien behind him and leaned into Patrick’s warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very, very much for reading!!  
> ❤️ Sunset


End file.
